More on LinuxToday

Manual Backups in Linux, DD

"There are several different ways to make backups of data for
any operating system. In the "glory days" of UNIX people would
usually write a cron job that would create a Tape ARchive of their
system and write that TAR to a tape drive. Well, those days are
long gone, as are those scripts. What is here? DD. DD is very
powerful and rather under appreciated tool. Do note that dd does
NOT have a progress indicator. As such, I recommend that you
apt-get install pv.

"So, a simple backup?

#dd if=/dev/sdX | pv | dd of=/dev/sdY

"The above assumes that you have access to another hard disc of
the exact same make, and that you wish to mirror your drive in use
onto the other drive (pv is just the progress indicator). Not your
cup of tea? Ok. Now, this is the command I use for backup. It's
faster than bit by bit, though not quite as safe. It also will not
quit when it encounters a disc error. I compresses your output, and
instead of outputting to a disc, it will output to a file. The
restore on this one is pretty much the same."